I remember in 2009 or 2010, when I first came across Minecraft. It was not hugely popular yet, but it already had quite an active community.
I played quite a few hours of the game, both alone and together with a couple of friends.
One day, after a couple of weeks or something, I learned about a crafting wiki that told you how to craft different items.
At the time, at least for me, it was not clear how you figure out what items you can craft and what items need to be combined in what patterns to craft those new items.
So for me, that crafting wiki became quite essential.
Maybe other people were figuring out how to craft things by trial and error? Or maybe there was something in the game that told them how to craft specific things?
People figured out from friends how to craft things or looked at the wiki. Then NEI came out (successor is now called JEI) which showed every item and its recipe. Game changer.
If you want to see an almost entirely unspoilered playthrough of Minecraft, Japanese player PiroPito has a long series of videos on Youtube (with English subtitles):
This series is notable for inspiring the addition of Ruined Portals, as construction of a Nether Portal had no in-game hints at the time, and was the only thing he needed a spoiler to figure out.
He also needed a hint for spawning the Wither. The game already has a hint for this but it's obscure, so he was given a hint for where to find the in-game hint. Tragic but funny result when he eventually figured it out.
I think Wikis are hugely important for games. This opinion came from playing Guild Wars 1 and 2. Arenanet supported the game wikis, no ads. The wiki is even integrated into the game you can pass /wiki an in-game item or even a search query and a browser window to the official wiki will open up.
Sometimes I forget how to build a gate versus a fence in MC, the trial and error takes just about the same time as search the MC wiki, I still search the wiki more often than flail.
There was not. There is now but for the better part of a decade it was just... Something you were supposed to have learned from a youtube video or a friend or something.
The main way the game teaches you how to play is the "advancements" system. It's a tree of achievements, starting with "walk around" and "chop down a tree", and ending with "defeat the final boss" or "bake a cake", each with a one-line description.
There's also a "recipe book", which tells you how to craft[1] items. More recipes get added as you collect the ingredients needed to make them.
However, these systems were only added in 2017. (For contrast, the game started development in 2009 and reached 1.0 in 2011.) Before that, how to progress was a lot less clear. It was assumed you had someone teaching you how to play, that you watched videos of other people playing, or that you read the wiki.
[1]: The process of combining the items you've collected, by slotting them into a 3×3 grid in a specific pattern (the "recipe"), to make new, more useful items.
no, and there's no tutorial or anything. it's weird to jump right into the game without prior experience. you sort of need a friend to explain it to you.
And for the group I played with this was an essential element of the fun. The chaos of trying to survive the first few nights when you knew nothing about the game. The fear of the unknown as darkness falls, panic induced by sightings and sounds of threats unfamiliar. I’d love to be able to forget all I know and re-experience this version of the game.
I played quite a few hours of the game, both alone and together with a couple of friends.
One day, after a couple of weeks or something, I learned about a crafting wiki that told you how to craft different items.
At the time, at least for me, it was not clear how you figure out what items you can craft and what items need to be combined in what patterns to craft those new items.
So for me, that crafting wiki became quite essential.
Maybe other people were figuring out how to craft things by trial and error? Or maybe there was something in the game that told them how to craft specific things?